The Fédération Internationale de Football Association – better known as Fifa – has only a few days left to respond to the letter that a Dutch trade union sent it several weeks ago. The letter, made public by the British newspaper the Guardian, is signed by the Federatie nederlandse vakbeweging (Fnv), the main Dutch trade union with over one million members, on behalf of a 31-year-old migrant worker from Bangladesh. Nadim Sharaful Alam, as he is known, worked in Qatar between 2014 and 2016 as a labourer on the construction sites of the large stadiums that will host the 2022 football World Cup. For 18 months, his rights were trampled upon and he was forced to live in unacceptable conditions. With the silent complicity of Fifa, the Fnv charges.

Red card for Qatar

The decision to hold the 2022 football World Cup in Qatar was taken in 2010. Since then, the Gulf state has spared no expense – 200 billion dollars in investment – to equip itself with the infrastructure needed to host the event. This includes the Al-Wakrah Stadium, designed by the star architect Zaha Hadid, who recently passed away, and the Khalifa International Stadium in Doha, enlarged for the occasion. To build these facilities, contractors brought tens of thousands of migrant workers into the country, particularly from Nepal, India and Bangladesh, who often go into debt with placement agencies in their home countries that promise them work on the construction sites. Moreover, once they arrive in Qatar, migrant workers find themselves caught in the grip of the kafala system. In practice, migrants in Qatar can only work if they have a guarantor, a kafeel. The bond that forms between the two is so tight that workers cannot change jobs or even leave the country without their kafeel's authorisation. This form of slavery goes hand in hand with low wages, indecent housing and inadequate working conditions. The result: despite the difficulty of obtaining reliable statistics, it is estimated that over a thousand migrant workers may have died on the Qatar 2022 World Cup construction sites. More than enough to outrage the NGOs that have been denouncing corruption and exploitation for years.

Fifa with its back against the wall

Faced with the accusations levelled by NGOs and international pressure, Qatar voted for a reform of the kafala system that will come into force in January 2017. Fifa, for its part, has on the one hand publicly condemned these abuses and commissioned a report, while on the other has always maintained that it bears no responsibility for the social problems of host countries and that it has done everything in its power to ensure satisfactory conditions for workers. According to the Fnv, however, Fifa could first and foremost have demanded greater guarantees at the time of the award (which was itself surrounded by suspicion and has already been the subject of an internal investigation), by leveraging the binding agreements it signs with each host country. Subsequently, it could have pushed more forcefully for Qatar to reform its labour system, rather than making do with the modest and slow improvements achieved so far. Fifa now finds itself facing a dilemma. The material and moral damages sought by Nadim Sharaful Alam amount to 10,390.53 Swiss francs, equivalent to just over 9,600 euros. The sum is negligible in itself, but it should not be forgotten that, according to estimates, the number of migrant workers employed on the Qatar 2022 construction sites stands at 1.7 million. If even a small proportion were to follow the path opened up by Alam, it would be catastrophic for Fifa. At the same time, the Fnv is threatening to drag Fifa before a Swiss court should it reject its demands out of hand. A new legal case that would certainly end up in the spotlight around the world, less than a year after the scandal that engulfed Sepp Blatter, Gianni Infantino's predecessor at the helm of Fifa.